How do question-answer exchanges among generations matter for children’s happiness?

Intergenerational exchange plays an increasing role in realizing sustainable societies. Question-answer exchanges are the trigger for individuals to initiate some intergenerational relations, and the literature has established that inquisitiveness (curiosity about something and someone different) contributes to people’s generativity and happiness. However, little is known about how children’s inquisitiveness influences their generative concern and happiness. We claim that inquisitiveness is essential for children to enhance their happiness and hypothesize that those who receive a positive response from adults tend to be inquisitive and express the signs of generativity. To empirically examine the hypothesis, we have statistically characterized inquisitiveness in relation to adult-child interaction, generativity (offering care for people and the natural environment) and happiness, using the data from a survey of 511 Japanese children between 9 and 14 years and by applying the revised generativity concern scale (GCS-R). The results show that inquisitiveness correlates with generativity and happiness, primarily that a positive response by adults to children’s inquiries promotes their inquisitiveness through adult-child interactions. Our analysis shows that children’s inquisitiveness, encouraged by adults’ positive responses, is more significant in happiness than the generativity concern during childhood. Overall, the results suggest that adults responding positively to children’s questions is essential for promoting inquisitiveness and increasing happiness.

Introduction would also be valuable.Elaboration on these and additional general points, and more specific comments, are provided below.
Our response: We greatly appreciate your courteous and constructive comments.We have learned a lot from your comments.We have revised the manuscript as much as possible in response to your specific ideas and suggestions.We have responded to each of your suggestions as follows.
2. Reviewer comment: Introduction: The meaning of the phrase "generative concern" is not clear early on in the Introduction.Please explicitly state what is meant by this phrase early in the Introduction (e.g., in the first paragraph).For example, on page 6 it is characterized as "offering care for people and (the) natural environment."Providing a few examples/paraphrases of the actual questions given to the young age-group tested could also be helpful.
Our response: Thank you for your kind comments.We understand and agree with your points.Accordingly, We have added the meaning indicated by "generativity" to the first paragraph of the Introduction and revised it as follows.
[Introduction section: Page 1, lines 2-16: Curiosity is an essential element of individuals' creativity, maturity and open-mindedness [33,55,32,22].Children's tendency to ask questions, driven by their curiosity, shall be an initial step in building human relations and learning.In the literature, such a tendency is conceptualized as "inquisitiveness" representing curiosity about something and someone different [35,19].For instance, [18] examine adultchild conversational exchanges by focusing on young children's questions and responses and claims that such communications provide essential bases for children's future life, especially their growth through human interactions.Regarding the role of adults in responding to children's curiosity, "generativity" has been known as the characteristic that helps the next generation grow and lead to a sustainable society [17,45,56,26].Moreover, having excellent relationships with family, friends and others contributes to people's generativity and happiness [45,28,27,53,60].However, little is known about how inquisitiveness influences people's generativity and happiness in their childhood.Therefore, this research addresses the role and mechanism of children's inquisitiveness in the emergence of generativity and their happiness through intergenerational communication.] 3. Reviewer comment: Introduction: It is a considerable mischaracterization of Maslow's theory to suggest that "people are happy as they become wealthy."Please rephrase.
Our response: Thank you for your precise comments.We agree with your points.Our description is written in a way that misleads the reader.Accordingly, We have revised the relevant text as follows.
Maslow [44] is the psychologist who proposed a wellbeing theory, i.e., Maslow's hypothesis, based on psychological needs and gratification processes, and implies that material wealth increases people's satisfaction with the basic needs stage but that other factors, such as psychological factors, are essential to people's overall wellbeing.To examine this hypothesis, some researchers have developed and refined happiness measurements, such as the subjective happiness scale (SHS) and satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) [see, e.g., 9,10,41].
[59] and [8] empirically examine the hypothesis with cross-country data utilizing happiness scales and conclude that wealth can explain variations in happiness across countries; however, there should be some other crucial predictors.Following these works, the literature has focused on how happiness is associated with various cultural, sociodemographic and personal factors other than income or wealth, including gender, marital status, educational record, self-esteem, optimism and human relations [12,13,31,36,29,49,11,4].Overall, aging, income, human relationships and personality traits are established to be the essential characteristics of happiness [62,65,39,2,46,42,1].] 4. Reviewer comment: The subsection on "Participants" is an admixture of study overview statements, participants, and procedure.
(a) It should be greatly condensed, using more direct and simple statements, that specifically describe the participants.
(b) It could be helpful for some of the demographic information that is presented in the first section of the results (e.g., percentage of females and mean age in urban and non-urban areas) to be instead provided here in the Participants subsection.
(c) Please indicate how many participants were invited to take part vs. how many actually participated.
(d) Some of the text in the Participants subsection could be better presented earlier, as a study overview or similar (e.g., the broad characterization of the measures and the reference to Figure 1).Perhaps provide such an overview in a paragraph or two before the Method section.
(e) Some of the text in the Participants subsection, such as sending invitation letters and obtaining written consent should be in a separate Procedure subsection.
(f) The procedure subsection should also provide additional details of how the study was actually conducted, such as how long it took for the children to complete the questionnaires, the order in which the questionnaires were completed, when the questionnaires were administered (e.g., in the children's classrooms, during class-time or before or after school) and how they were administered (e.g., in computerized or paper-and-pencil format).
Our response: Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comments.In accordance with your suggestions (a) to (f), We have modified the manuscript as follows: (a) We have tried to modify the participant subsection to be greatly condensed that specifically describe the participants; (b) We have modified the "Participants section" to incorporate some of the demographic information from the Results section into the description; (c) We have revised the text to add that a total of 570 invitations were sent to the three study sites, with a final total of 511 participants; (d) We have added a description in the last paragraph of the introduction that serves as an overview of the study.We modified the text of the relevant paragraphs by adding some of the data measurement descriptions presented in the Participants subsection; (e) We have described the survey invitation and consent form in the newly added Procedure subsection; (f) We have added additional information to the Procedures subsection, including where the survey was administered, when it was administered, the order of the questions, the time required to answer, and how it was administered.children's happiness is characterized by inquisitiveness and generativity, while these con-cepts are known to be concerned with how people build and keep good relationships with their family, friends and others.Inquisitiveness is considered an essential factor that triggers communication even in a child and contributes to building pleasant human relations.Therefore, even among children, inquisitiveness is hypothesized to be a crucial determinant of happiness and generativity.This study aims to empirically examine the cognitive, noncognitive and sociodemographic factors of inquisitiveness, generativity and happiness in children using a single analytical framework, as described in Figure 1.Thus, we conduct questionnaire surveys with 511 Japanese participants between 9 and 14 years of age to collect data, following previous studies that have analyzed the relationships between behaviors and happiness with cross-sectional data [58,61,37,51,52] Our response: Thank you for your thoughtful comments.I understand and agree with your points.Accordingly, I have moved the relevant paragraph in the "Discussions" section to the last paragraph of the "Results" section and modified it as follows.
[Results section: Pages 17-18, lines 489-505: We now summarize the answers to the three research questions at the end of the introduction.As described in our conceptual framework of Figure 1, it is well known that cognitive, noncognitive and sociodemographic factors mainly characterize happiness.The first question is, "How does children's inquisitiveness, along with generativity, affect happiness?"We answer that generativity (α 1 ), inquisitiveness (α 2 ) and adult's positive response (α 3 ), directly and indirectly, affect happiness in childhood, demonstrating the importance of generativity and inquisitiveness for subjective happiness (SH) in Figure 1.The second question is, "Does children's inquisitiveness play a role in generativity?"We answer that inquisitiveness (β 1 ) is meaningful to ascertain whether children possess the signs of generativity, along with adult's positive response (β 2 ) in Figure 1.
The third question is, "How does adults' response manner affect children's inquisitiveness?" We answer that adult's positive response (γ 1 ) is the crucial determinant to ascertain whether children possess high inquisitiveness in Figure 1.Previous studies indicate the importance of generativity for an adult's subjective happiness [54,25,26].However, our regression and SEM analyses show that the magnitude and statistical significance of inquisitiveness and adults' positive responses are more important for subjective happiness in their childhood than generativity.]6. Reviewer comment: Discussion -The sentence, "Our study demonstrates that children who receive suitable responses from adults tend to increase their inquisitiveness and express the signs of generativity" is an over-statement of what the study can show (given it is an entirely cross-sectional study, using only self-reported outcomes).What the study shows is that (at one point in time) children's self-reported inquisitiveness is strongly positively associated with their (self-reported) perception of receiving encouraging responses for their inquisitiveness from adults, and also is positively associated with children's (self-reported) generativity concerns.
Our response: Thank you for your kind comments.As you indicated, our study is crosssectional.The data collected are self-reported by questionnaire at a certain point in time, and the relevant sentence is an over-statement.Accordingly, we have revised it as follows.
[Pages 18-19, lines 524-546: Hirose and Kotani [25] and Hirose et al. [26] have pointed out that inquisitiveness positively correlates with how people enhance their generative concern and happiness through questionnaire surveys with Japanese and Palauan adults, respectively.According to Hirose and Kotani [25] and Hirose et al. [26], inquisitiveness, directly and indirectly, affects happiness, but the most critical factor is generativity.Our study also demonstrates that children's degree of inquisitiveness is positively correlated with their generativity and happiness.Some studies have pointed out that inquisitiveness is stable as a part of one's critical thinking disposition [5,7,3].Conversely, other studies have pointed out that inquisitiveness can be acquired and further enhanced by learning [24,18,64,19].
Inquisitiveness and adults' positive responses are identified as the main determinants of children's subjective happiness, and our regression models show generativity as insignificant.Generativity is the characteristic that helps and leads the next generation to grow [17,45,56,26].Childhood is also important as a preparatory process for generativity, but for children, it is more critical to arouse and satisfy inquisitiveness through good relationships with adults than with the problems of future generations.Although limited by data from self-reported answers at one point in time, our study demonstrates that children's inquisitiveness is strongly and positively associated with the perception that they received an encouraging response to their inquisitiveness from an adult and with signs of their generative concern.Overall, the results of this study suggest that learning together in intergenerational relationships between adults and children is essential for people's subjective happiness and should be considered for development as an educational program for families, communities and schools.]7. Reviewer comment: What is to be made of the negative relation between children's inquisitiveness and children's age (e.g., page 17 and Table 5)?There should be some explicit discussion of this outcome.
Our response: Thank you for your constructive comments.We agree with the points you raised.The negative correlation between age and inquisitiveness is consistent with some previous studies [5,57,15,6].Other studies have reported on extrinsic curiosity enhanced by prompting by educators [38,50].While our study's data set is insufficient to explain the negative correlation between age and inquisitiveness, we have provided one of statistical evidence that adult responses to children's questions may be related to their curiosity.Accordingly, we have added a sentence in the Result section and one paragraph in the Discussion section to explain the negative relationship between age and inquisitiveness as follows.
[Results section: Page 15, lines 430-447: Second, age negatively affects inquisitiveness at 1 % significance in models 1 and 4. The estimated coefficients of age in models 1 to 4 suggest that the participants may have a decrease in the range of their inquisitiveness between −0.770 and −0.957 when they age by one year.The negative value indicated by age is consistent with several studies that report a negative linear transition of curiosity, a concept similar to inquisitiveness, once young children begin formal schooling [57,15,6]."Family food shopping" also exhibits 5 % statistical significance with a positive sign in models 2 to 4, implying that the participants who go grocery shopping with their parents enhance their inquisitiveness 0.324 ∼ 0.383, as compared with other participants.Several independent variables, such as "joining sports clubs," "negative response," gender and areas show the possibility as minor determinants of the participants' inquisitiveness.The other independent variables, such as household members and tutoring school days, are statistically insignificant, as shown in models 2 to 4 in Table 6.We confirm that the main results qualitatively remain the same, irrespective of the various specifications of models other than models 1 to 4, such as interaction terms among the variables.Overall, adult's positive response, age and "family food shopping" are confirmed as the main determinants having statistical and practical significance to the likelihood of the participants increasing their inquisitiveness.] [Discussions section: Page 18, lines 507-523: We should mention the inverse correlation between the children's age and their inquisitiveness, shown in Table 6.The negative correlation, as revealed by the regression analysis in our study, is consistent with several previous studies reporting a linear negative transition between children's age and curiosity [57,15,6].
Many studies report a general decline in questioning throuthout children and adolescence [16,21,5,57,15].For instance, Tizard and Hughes [57] find that children reduce their questions from twenty-six an hour at home with their mothers to two per hour upon entering the formal education system.While we understand the importance of distinguishing curiosity from inquisitiveness, both share concepts that help us predict the nexus between age and inquisitiveness.Other studies cast doubt upon the veracity of the purported linear transition in age and curiosity, advocating instead for the pivotal role of educators and environmental factors in nurturing children's inquisitive disposition [38,50].Regrettably, our dataset remains insufficient to reveal the mechanism of the negative correlation between children's age and their inquisitiveness.Nevertheless, our study proffers empirical evidence that suggests the hypothesis that constructive adult responses to children's inquiries may positively correlate with the young ones' inquisitiveness.]8. Reviewer comment: Minor Comments (1) -p. 2, a manuscript submitted to a scientific journal would not usually include a"content" page (a contents page is generally more expected/appropriate for a book or a thesis) (2) -p. 5, words missing/fragmented sentence: "Therefore, inquisitiveness is hypothesized to be a crucial determinant of happiness and generativity, even among children, and empirically examine their cognitive, noncognitive and sociodemographic factors using a single analytical framework."Suggest separating these key ideas into two sentences, along the lines: "Therefore, inquisitiveness is hypothesized to be a crucial determinant of happiness and generativity, even among children.The aim of this study is to empirically examine the cognitive, noncognitive and sociodemographic factors of inquisitiveness, generativity and ***significant at 1 %, **significant at 5 percent,*significant at 10 percent happiness in children (9 to 14 years of age) using a single analytical framework." (3) -p. 7, the subsection heading should read "Measures" (4) -p. 9 -p.10, the word "theoretical" in "theoretical range" (several places) is confusing; suggest rephrasing as "the maximum possible range" (5) -p.10: "These subscales are reliable for influencing people's behaviors and attitudes in many vital contexts" -suggest rephrasing to read something like, "These subscales have been found to reliably assess people's behaviors and attitudes in many important contexts" (6) -p.11 -p.12 -rephrase "disturbance term" (several places) as "error term" (7) -p. 12 -the rationale for performing median regression analyses might be better placed earlier in the results section.Our response: Thank you for your valuable comments.Your comments are very valid, and we agree with all of them.Accordingly, we have addressed and modified each comment as follows.
(1) Thank you very much for your appreciative comments.We have gladly learned from your kind comments.We will now put what we have learned to good use.
(2) Thank you for your kind comments.We agree with splitting the sentence into two parts to make it easier to understand.Accordingly, we have revised the relevant sentence as you suggested.
(3) Thank you for your comments.I agree with your comments.Accordingly, I have corrected the subsection"Measur" to "Measure" in the manuscript.
(4) Thank you for your comments.We are glad to hear your honest opinion that using"theoretical" is confusing.We have followed your suggestion and rephrased the"theoretical range" to"the maximum possible range." (5) Thank you for your kind comments.We completely agree with your remarks.The scale has come to be trusted as a measure of people's behavior and attitudes.Accordingly, we have revised the text as follows."Thesesubscales have been found to reliably assess people's behaviors and attitudes in many important contexts."(6) Thank you for your comments.We are glad to hear your opinion that the"disturbance term" is not appropriate to use.We have followed your suggestion and rephrased the"disturbance term" to"error term."(7) Thank you for your comment.We have thought it over and agree with you.Accordingly, we have moved the "Description of Rationale for Median Regression Analysis" from the "Data Analysis Section" to the "Results Section" and modified it as follows.
[ (10) Thank you for your comments.We agree with you.Accordingly, we have corrected "Discussion" to "Discussions" as you indicated.
(11) Thank you for your comments.We agree with your suggestion.Accordingly, we have replaced "open questions" with "research questions" in the relevant sentence.
(12) Thank you very much for your very kind suggestion.We agree with you.Accordingly, we have corrected the relevant text as follows."Our study also demonstrates that children's degree of inquisitiveness is significantly positively correlated with their generativity and happiness." [Pages 18-19, lines 524-533: Hirose and Kotani [25] and Hirose et al. [26] have pointed out that inquisitiveness positively correlates with how people enhance their generative concern and happiness through questionnaire surveys with Japanese and Palauan adults, respectively.According to Hirose and Kotani [25] and Hirose et al. [26], inquisitiveness, directly and indirectly, affects happiness, but the most critical factor is generativity.Our study also demonstrates that children's degree of inquisitiveness is positively correlated with their generativity and happiness.Some studies have pointed out that inquisitiveness is stable as a part of one's critical thinking disposition [5,7,3].Conversely, other studies have pointed out that inquisitiveness can be acquired and further enhanced by learning [24,18,64,19].] (13) Thank you very much for your comments.Following your suggestion, we have modified the panel data to longitudinal data for the relevant parts.
(14) Thank you very much for your very kind advice.We have made a very elementary mistake.Accordingly, we have corrected the text in the diagram correctly.

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Participants subsection: Pages 4, lines 102-108: The participants in the study are elementary and junior high school students living in a certain municipality in Kochi Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan.The participants' mean age is 12.32 years with the standard deviation = 14.23, ranging between 9 and 14 years.The percentage of female participants and their mean age are almost similar in urban and non-urban areas, 46 % and 47 %, as well as 12.61 years and 12.21 years, respectively.We have surveyed three regions (one categorized as urban and two non-urban) for the study because they possess different sociodemographic and geographical characteristics.][Procedure subsection: Page 4, lines 110-126: We recruited the participants by sending them invitation letters from the municipal education board offices.A total of 570 invitations were sent to schools in the three study sites.We collected 511 samples in city-A (140) and two rural areas of town-B (225) and town-C (146), respectively.After obtaining written consent for participation from the individual and his/her parents, we conducted a questionnaire survey in several school facilities in the study regions.The questionnaire used simple language that elementary school students could understand and was designed to be easy to answer on a touchscreen display.This survey collects a sample of 511 participants with information by asking them in the following order: (1) subjective happiness; (2) inquisitiveness (curiosity about and acceptance of something and someone different and/or new); (3) the revised generative concern (offering care for people and the natural environment); (4) costs/benefits of the consultation (positive effects of reaction in an appropriate manner) and (5) sociodemographic factors, such as age, gender, attending tutoring school, joining sports clubs and household members.The variables we collected in this survey can be categorized into cognitive, non-cognitive and sociodemographic factors in relation to subjective happiness, as described in Figure 1.The data were collected between November and December 2021.][Introduction section: Pages 2-3, lines 62-83: No previous works have addressed how . The study collects data to analyze the relationship between children's curiosity, adult responses to children's questions, children's attitudes toward the younger and nature and children's happiness using the following measures: inquisitiveness (curiosity about and acceptance of something and someone different and/or new); costs/benefits of the consultation (positive effects of reaction in an appropriate manner); the revised generative concern (offering care for people and the natural environment); and subjective happiness.With these data, this study addresses the following three research questions.(1) How does children's inquisitiveness, along with generativity, affect their happiness?(2) Does their inquisitiveness play a role in generativity?(3) How does adults' manner of responding affect children's inquisitiveness?] 5. Reviewer comment: Discussion -The first paragraph of the discussion, which has multiple specific references to Figure 2, seems more appropriately placed as a concluding paragraph of the Results.

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-p. 15 -p.16: important typo: the text here should read "Overall.... confirmed to be the main determinants of the participants' subjective happiness (SH)" ("not of the participants' generativity") (9) -p.18 -the relevant Figure number for path C is not indicated (10) -p.18 -the subsection heading should read "Discussion" (11) -p.18 -suggest rephrasing to read "the three research questions posed" (12) -p.19 -the text, "children's inquisitiveness statistically affects the sign of generativity and happiness" is unclear/difficult to parse; suggest something like "children's degree of inquisitiveness is significantly positively correlated with their generativity and happiness" (13) -p.20 -the reference to "panel data" is unclear; suggest "longitudinal data" or similar (14) -Figure 2 -the text in the Figure should read "sports clubs" (not ports clubs)

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Pages 7-8, lines 244-279: To characterize research questions (1), (2) and (3), we perform regression analyses on the subjective happiness (SH), the revised generativity concern scale (GCS-R) and inquisitiveness are taken as dependent variables, respectively.When observations of these variables in the sample are considered to be non-normally distributed and/or skewed, the median regression is applied to analyze the determinants of dependent variables instead of parametric mean-based regressions, such as ordinary least squares (OLS) regression.We have run Shapiro-Wilk tests for three dependent variables of SH, GCS-R and inquisitiveness, as shown in Figure2.The results reject the null hypothesis (z = 3.955, P < 0.01) for happiness, (z = 5.871, P < 0.01) for generativity and (z = 5.741, P < 0.01) for inquisitiveness.The tests confirm that the three variables, SH, GCS-R and inquisitiveness, are not normally distributed.The literature claims that median regressions are more appropriate than parametric mean-based ones, yielding robust estimations against the boundary values and/or outliers, especially when the dependent variable is bounded on a certain support range, non-normally distributed, and skewed[23,63].Therefore, we have employed the median regressions for happiness, generativity, and inquisitiveness with the specifications of Eq1 to 3, respectively.]Thank you for pointing out my serious typo.We agree with you.Accordingly, We have corrected "generativity" to "subjective happiness (SH)" in the relevant sentence.Thank you for your comments.As you indicated, there was an error in the Figurenumbercorresponding to paths.Accordingly, we have corrected the error so that the Figure numbers appear correctly.

Inquisitiveness
Fig 2c.Histogram of the dependent variable